UN: 3,000 fled eastern Congo violence this year

GENEVA -- The U.N. refugee agency says more than 3,000 Congolese have fled into Uganda since the start of this year with harrowing accounts of abductions, looting, harassment and rape.

Agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says most people crossing the border from the Rutshuru district of eastern Congo's North Kivu Province come from farming communities, where entire villages have fled the nightly attacks by armed men.

Edwards told reporters Friday in Geneva that one Congolese man recounted to U.N. staff how his daughter was killed resisting several armed men and he was sexually assaulted by the same group after having to watch the gang rape of his wife.

The Rwandan Hutu militia, known by its French acronym FDLR, has terrorized eastern Congo since Rwanda's 1994 genocide.